the art of
Renaissance
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Renaissance Art Known as the Renaissance, the period immediately following the Middle Ages in Europe saw a great revival of interest in the classical learning and values of ancient Greece and Rome. Against a backdrop of political stability and growing prosperity, the development of new technologies–including the printing press, a new system of astronomy and the discovery and exploration of new continents–was accompanied by a flowering of philosophy, literature and especially art. The style of painting, sculpture and decorative arts identified with the Renaissance emerged in Italy in the late 14th century; it reached its zenith in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, in the work of Italian masters such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. In addition to its expression of classical Greco-Roman traditions, Renaissance art sought to capture the experience of the individual and the beauty and mystery of the natural world.
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The Origin of Renaissance Art
he origins of Renaissance art can be traced to Italy in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. During this so-called “proto-Renaissance� period (1280-1400), Italian scholars and artists saw themselves as reawakening to the ideals and achievements of classical Roman culture. Writers such as Petrarch (1304-1374) and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) looked back to ancient Greece and Rome and sought to revive the languages, values and intellectual traditions of those cultures after the long period of stagnation that had followed the fall of the Roman Empire in the sixth century. The Florentine painter Giotto (1267?-1337), the most famous artist of the proto-Renaissance, made enormous advances in the
technique of representing the human body realistically. His frescoes were said to have decorated cathedrals at Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence and Naples, though there has been difficulty attributing such works with certainty. The Florentine painter Giotto (1267?-1337), the most famous artist of the proto-Renaissance, made enormous advances in the technique of representing the human body realistically. His frescoes were said to have decorated cathedrals at Assisi, Rome, Padua, Florence and Naples, though there has been difficulty attributing such works with certainty. page 3
Early Renaissance At the beginning of the 15th century, Italy experienced a cultural rebirth, a renaissance that would massively affect all sectors of society. Turning away from the preceding Gothic and Romanesque periods’ iconography, Florentine artists spurred a rejuvenation of the glories of classical art in line with a more humanistic and individualistic emerging contemporary era. Based in this flourishing new environment that empowered people to fully immerse themselves in studies of the humanities, Early Renaissance artists began to create work intensified by knowledge of architecture, philosophy, theology, mathematics, science, and design. The innovations that emerged in art during this period would go on to cause reverberations, which continue to influence creative and cultural arenas today. This Early Renaissance is also known as the Quattrocento, derived from the Italian mille quattrocento, meaning 1400, and refers primarily to the period dominating the 15th century in Italian art. It was the forebear to the following High Renaissance, North European Renaissance, Mannerism, and Baroque periods that followed. page 4
Artworks of Early Renaissance “Both Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci extensively visited the Chapel to study and sketch Masaccio’s human figures, which da Vinci called ‘perfect.’”
Expulsion from the Garden of Eden by Masaccio This fresco portrays a nude Adam and Eve as they are expelled from the Garden of Eden. They walk out through an arch from which black lines emanate, representing the angry voice of God, with a red clad angel holding a black sword hovering above to usher them on their way. Adam buries his face in his hands, his body language and facial expression conveying deep anguish. Eve ‘s face is open mouthed and stricken, her hands held in a Venus Pudica pose to cover her breasts and pubic area as if in shame. The background is bare, only earth and a singular rock formation, evoking the hard fate ahead for the expunged couple. The composition is remarkably elegant, emphasizing the pair’s banishment with heightened emotion. The line dividing earth and blue sky diagonally runs from left to right to highlight the pair’s forward motion, as their opposing feet mirror each other along the path. The nudity of the two figures, classically proportioned, is not sensual but suggests the starkness of their situation, stripped of God’s favor. This scene is part of a fresco cycle of Biblical scenes in the Brancacci Chapel painted by Masaccio, as well as Masolino and other artists. In depicting the two naked, the artist departed from the Biblical account in which they wore fig leaves, and also, boldly, created the first nudes in painting since the Roman era. He also added the arch and reduced the multiple cherubs mentioned in the Biblical account to focus on one angel. page 5
Florence, Italy
Though the Catholic Church remained a major patron of the arts during the Renaissance–from popes and other prelates to convents, monasteries and other religious organizations–works of art were increasingly commissioned by civil government, courts and wealthy individuals. Much of the art produced during the early Renaissance was commissioned by the wealthy merchant families of Florence, most notably the Medici family. From 1434 until 1492, when Lorenzo de’ Medici–known as “the Magnificent” for his strong leadership as well as his support of the arts–died, the powerful family presided over a golden age for the city of Florence. Pushed from power by a republican coalition in 1494, the Medici family spent years in exile but returned in 1512 to preside over another flowering of Florentine art, including the array of sculptures that now decorates the city’s Piazza della Signoria. page 6
High Renaissance Art By the end of the 15th century, Rome had displaced Florence as the principal center of Renaissance art, reaching a high point under the powerful and ambitious Pope Leo X (a son of Lorenzo de’ Medici). Three great masters–Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael–dominated the period known as the High Renaissance, which lasted roughly from the early 1490s until the sack of Rome by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1527. Leonardo (1452-1519) was the ultimate “Renaissance man” for the breadth of his intellect, interest and talent and his expression of humanist and classical values. Leonardo’s best-known works, including the “Mona Lisa” (1503-05), “The Virgin of the Rocks” (1485) and the fresco “The Last Supper” (1495-98), showcase his unparalleled ability to portray light and shadow, as well as the physical relationship between figures–humans, animals and objects alike–and the landscape around them.
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The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, and has been described as “the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world.�
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ona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, is the wife of Francesco del Giocondo. This painting is painted as oil on wood. The original painting size is 77 x 53 cm (30 x 20 7/8 in) and is owned by by the Government of France and is on the wall in the Louvre in Paris, France.
undulating imaginary valleys and rivers behind her. The blurred outlines, graceful figure, dramatic contrasts of light and dark, and overall feeling of calm are characteristic of da Vinci’s style. Due to the expressive synthesis that da Vinci achieved between sitter and landscape it is arguable whether Mona Lisa should be considered as a traditional portrait, for it represents an ideal rather than a real This figure of a woman, dressed in the Floren- woman. The sense of overall harmony achieved tine fashion of her day and seated in a visionary, in the painting especially apparent in the sitter’s mountainous landscape, is a remarkable instance faint smile reflects the idea of a link connecting of Leonardo’s sfumato technique of soft, heavi- humanity and nature. ly shaded modeling. The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic expression, which seems both alluring and aloof, In the Renaissance which brought together all has given the portrait universal fame. human activities, art meant science, art meant truth to life: Leonardo da Vinci was a great figure The Mona Lisa’s famous smile represents the because he embodied the epic endeavour of Italsitter in the same way that the juniper branches ian art to conquer universal values: he who comrepresent Ginevra Benci and the ermine represents bined within himself the fluctuating sensitivity of Cecilia Gallerani in their portraits, in Washington the artist and the deep wisdom of the scientist, he, and Krakow respectively. It is a visual represen- the poet and the master. tation of the idea of happiness suggested by the word “gioconda” in Italian. Leonardo made this In his Mona Lisa, the individual, a sort of minotion of happiness the central motif of the por- raculous creation of nature, represents at the same trait: it is this notion which makes the work such time the species: the portrait goes beyond its soan ideal. The nature of the landscape also plays cial limitations and acquires a universal meaning. a role. The middle distance, on the same level as Although Leonardo worked on this picture as the sitter’s chest, is in warm colors. Men live in a scholar and thinker, not only as a painter and this space: there is a winding road and a bridge. poet, the scientific and philosophical aspects of This space represents the transition between the his research inspired no following. But the formal space of the sitter and the far distance, where the aspect - the new presentation, the nobler attitude landscape becomes a wild and uninhabited space and the increased dignity of the model - had a deof rocks and water which stretches to the horizon, cisive influence over Florentine portraits of the which Leonardo has cleverly drawn at the level of next twenty years, over the classical portrait. With the sitter’s eyes. his Mona Lisa, Leonardo created a new formula, at the same time more monumental and more liveThe painting was among the first portraits to ly, more concrete and yet more poetic than that of depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape his predecessors. Before him, portraits had lacked and Leonardo was one of the first painters to use mystery; artists only represented outward appearaerial perspective. The enigmatic woman is por- ances without any soul, or, if they showed the soul, trayed seated in what appears to be an open log- they tried to express it through gestures, symbolic gia with dark pillar bases on either side. Behind objects or inscriptions. The Mona Lisa alone is a her a vast landscape recedes to icy mountains. living enigma: the soul is there, but inaccessible. Winding paths and a distant bridge give only the slightest indications of human presence. The sensuous curves of the woman’s hair and clothing, created through sfumato, are echoed in the page 9
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